Brazil’s inadequacies echoed by Neymar’s lack of patience against Colombia

Disappointment would have been bad enough for Brazil, but after the final whistle it became disgrace. Defeat to Colombia, followed by Neymar’s red card, may not resonate like the 7-1 defeat to Germany in the World Cup semi-final last year did, but the shame is just as real. After all the talk of trying to find some sort of redemption in the Copa América, all the same old flaws were there, just without quite the same hysteria.
This was a petulant, complacent, unimaginative Brazil and they now, almost unbelievably, must beat Venezuela in their final group game on Sunday to be sure of making it to the quarter-finals – and they will have to do it without the player on whom they have become so reliant.

Dunga, the Brazil coach, was probably right when he implied there had been a deliberate plan to wind Neymar up. Juan Cuadrado bundled him off the ball with a brusque shoulder charge early on, and Juan Camilo Zúñiga, whose challenge ended Neymar’s World Cup, seemed to take particular delight in sashaying past him after dispossessing him in the first half. By the end of the first half Neymar seemed ready to snap: he had been booked for a handball, then grabbed the referee, Enrique Osses, by the shoulder, and then clouted Cuadrado before fisting the ball away in frustration. The whistle perhaps saved him then, but at the end of the second half he snapped.

As the final whistle went, Neymar unleashed a shot that smacked Pablo Armero in the face. Jeison Murillo, who had scored the only goal of the game from Cuadrado’s free-kick in the first half, ran over to remonstrate, to which Neymar responded with a flicked headbutt. Carlos Bacca charged over and shoved the Barcelona forward, and joined Neymar in being sent off. Brazil will now be without Neymar for at least two games.

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“Colombia showed that it is a very experienced team,” Dunga said. “Our players at times got caught in their provocations and forgot to play football. Brazil have to play football. Brazil can’t go to war, we have to focus on what we do best, which is play football.”
But that is a profound misreading of the reality, just as Brazil blamed their opponents after the quarter-final against Colombia last year. Neymar may have been the ultimate victim of that game, but the game degenerated because of Brazil’s tactical fouling and targeting of James Rodríguez. Of 54 fouls in that match, 31 were committed by Brazil. On Wednesday night Brazil committed 20 to Colombia’s 19: the notion that they are still the pure purveyors of glorious football, thwarted by the evil Other, is simply a myth.
This is the same arrogance, the same refusal to accept that others are allowed to try to stop them, that undermined Brazil last year; it is the self-delusion of a nation that harks back to past glories and blames opponents for its failure to live up to them. “The referees have to respect Neymar because he is always getting hit,” said Willian, perpetuating the same myth. “It happened again today, and he was the one sent off.”
Neymar, superbly as he has played at times for Barcelona this season, is the manifestation of the problem. Four years ago he spent the Copa América shrugging plaintively at referees who didn’t offer him the same protection he received at home. That doesn’t seem to have changed much, but here he was also railing at opponents and team-mates. The way he shoved Fred and Tardelli away from a free-kick in the Peru match suggested a man running out of patience with the inadequacies of his team-mates.
It may be that being without their one idol forces other Brazil players to take responsibility, that they are not burdened by the constant thought that their task is to give the ball to Neymar, but on the evidence both of the World Cup and this tournament so far, without him they are desperately short of attacking options. For the final half-hour, all Brazil did was to pump balls into the box. In that sense Neymar’s frustration was understandable if not excusable.
But in a sense the issue is precisely Brazil’s reliance on him, as it was in the World Cup. Opponents know that if they stop Neymar, they effectively stop Brazil. He will be targeted which can lead, as it did in Fortaleza in the quarter-final last year, to him being injured, or it can lead, as it did here, to him being niggled into eruption. It would be wrong, though, to suggest that Colombia only stopped Neymar by underhand means. They mainly stopped him by means of a colossal performance from Carlos Sánchez. The Aston Villa midfielder stifled Lionel Messi in Santa Fe when Colombia held Argentina to a 0-0 draw four years ago; here he not merely neutered Neymar but also carried the ball forward.
With Neymar silenced, Brazil had nothing. Roberto Firmino and Diego Tardelli have each started a game at centre-forward, but neither has impressed; when Firmino blasted Brazil’s one real chance over the bar early in the second half, it was the kind of miss that could define career. Willian, Fred and Philippe Coutinho have been quiet, suffering perhaps from the perceived need to route everything through Neymar.
Dunga was supposed to offer a calming head after the craziness of last year. His appointment was a calculated step back into a pragmatic past. Ten friendly victories in his first 10 games suggested he was beginning to turn things around. But competitive games are the true measure. A scatty win over Peru before Wednesday night’s undignified defeat, their first to Colombia in 24 years – since the last Copa América in Chile, the day after Rodríguez was born – suggests those friendly victories were just a tarpaulin over the shambles. The wreckage remains.

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